The Site C juggernaut rolls on. Why? We don't need the power. Site C is being built to frack gas.
We know fracking triggers seismic events. We know Site C will increase the province’s greenhouse gas emissions to such an extent the government's commitment to GHG reduction targets becomes impossible.

Doug and the Slugs sold out the Commodore Ballroom about 40 times. But when they first played there on Sept. 14, 1979, it was a pretty big jump for a band that had been gigging at places like the Spinning Wheel and Rohan’s. So head “Slug” Doug Bennett designed a hilarious poster to promote the show. He assembled the Slugs and co-headliners Six Cylinder around a backyard barbeque, bringing along a couple of cases of Extra Old Stock and Black Label to set the mood.

As much as I relish getting emails liberally sprinkled with exclamation marks and upper-case warnings that VANCOUVER IS BEING DESTROYED, I thought that rather than writing about the real estate market again, it might be a nice change if we paused, took a deep breath and marked the beginning this week of the 10th annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, and with it, its attendant Haiku Invitational contest.

Gordon Campbell’s political miscalculation in 2009 to impose a harmonized sales tax on an unsuspecting public, shortly after an election where promises to the contrary had been made, continues to haunt the province. Whatever one might think of the miscalculation, the provincial sales tax is a seriously out-dated tax that needs to be modernized — a task that today’s politicians are understandably wary of. The B.C. public might have accepted the need to modernize taxes by moving from the PST to the HST if Campbell’s government had consulted properly, and proposed a lower tax rate to go along with the change. But no politician in their right mind would risk reigniting public fury by suggesting that path now.

Is B.C.’s income tax rate for small businesses too low? It sits today at 2.5 per cent, but if former premier Gordon Campbell had lasted long enough to have his ill-considered way, it would be even lower.

Re: Queen Mary School razing myopic, Opinion, Feb. 13
The common sense presented in Elizabeth Murphy’s article was very refreshing. It seems bizarre that the province of B.C. and the Vancouver school board cannot reconcile their differences and make decisions that would be cost-effective, environmentally friendly and provide infrastructure that anticipates future enrolment and changing educational needs in some of the oldest schools in the province.

VICTORIA After delivering a gracious tribute to former premier Bill Bennett in the legislature this week, Opposition leader John Horgan closed with a swipe at the B.C. Liberals for undermining one aspect of the Bennett legacy.

VICTORIA - With a year-and-a-half to go before the next provincial election, Premier Christy Clark has sought out former finance minister Carole Taylor to provide the B.C. Liberals with fresh ideas in response to uncertain economic times.

A liquefied natural gas guru. The onetime anchor of CBC news. B.C.'s former finance minister. These are just a few of the political power players who run the B.C. government. Hand-picked by Premier Christy Clark, they operate largely out of sight, turning the premier's policies into action, predicting her problems and navigating her crises.

Prem Vinning, a sometimes controversial power-broker in the federal and B.C. Liberal parties for more than a generation, may have missed his opportunity to get a long-coveted Senate seat. But the family of Vinning, still touted as a “kingmaker” in the Punjabi-Canadian media for his role in the remarkable rise to prominence of new Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, is benefiting from Justin Trudeau’s election win.

When B.C. first introduced a carbon tax in 2008, very few people would have predicted that Alberta would follow suit less than a decade later. Alberta still has a year left to explain the tax and its implications to a skeptical population. This period provides a chance to analyze some of the differences in the way the two jurisdictions decided to push the policy forward. In 2008, in a survey conducted just days before the carbon tax was implemented in B.C., opposition to the policy reached 49 per cent. However, 60 per cent of British Columbians were convinced that global warming “is real” and 53 per cent thought putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions was a good idea. The hearts and minds of British Columbians were “in it”, but the idea was still controversial.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marked the Paris climate agreement by committing to take on the “tough work that still needs to be accomplished both at home and around the world to implement the agreement.” Part of that tough work will be re-orienting federal funding to stop making the climate crisis worse.

An influential U.S. advocacy group is holding up B.C.’s carbon tax as a model for Americans and the world. The analysis on which the praise for the made-in-B. C. policy is based looks in more depth than other studies have at pre- and post-carbon-tax data on greenhouse gas emissions. It’s the work of the non-partisan Carbon Tax Center — the group that brought together 32 VIPs, including four Nobel Laureates, three former U.S. cabinet secretaries who served under four presidents (from both major political parties), and two former vice-chairs of the Federal Reserve’s board of governors — to lobby negotiators at the recent climate change summit in Paris.

Vancouver will spend $655,000 over the next two years to beef up annual breakfast and lunch programs for the city’s most vulnerable children. Adding to a program already operating with the aid of the province, private donors and non-profit agencies that provides free lunches to about 1,400 students and breakfasts for 820, the city says it will spend $320,000 in 2016 to add another 258 meals daily, as well as upgrade at least three school kitchens. This year it will spend $50,000.

Kudos to the B.C. Egg Marketing Board for labelling Wednesday's made-for-media event in down-town Vancouver - the unveiling of a life-size fire truck made from, of all odd things, egg cartons - as an exercise in "eggonomics."

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